Margaret's Story
by grayskies29
Summary: Companion piece to Finding a Way in the Darkest Night. To be read in conjunction with Chapter 27.


Disclaimer: All characters belong to the Marshall/LeSourd family and to any others who may won rights to them. I am using them solely for entertainment purposes and mean no harm.

A/N: This is a companion piece to _Finding a Way in the Darkest Night._ So if you haven't read the last chapter, this will not make sense. Don't flame me for it, if you don't get it.

Margaret's Story

or as she'd like to call it

The Road Home

I have been running all my life. I deluded myself into thinking that I was going somewhere only to find I was nowhere after all. So I would take off running yet again to see I'd end up somewhere different. And sure enough the surroundings were in fact different, but I was always feeling the same. Some part of me was missing and I sought to fill that void by any means necessary.

Then one day I found myself back where most of my journey had started in the first place. It's funny how I ended up there twice before a young blue-eyed woman told me the reason I was back in the first place. I didn't want to die old and alone.

Oh, how I despised that fresh-face woman. What did she know of the world? She was so innocent and naive to how cruel this world could be. She was a stranger to me. How could she _know_ what I needed? But somewhere I knew she was right, I was afraid of being alone.

So, after many years, I finally found my answer as to why I was running and never getting anywhere. I had been running from love but yet still seeking it out everywhere I went. Silly thing to be running from an emotion, but I was. I didn't feel that I deserved it but I needed it more than I needed air to breathe and water to drink. I needed it and it was always right there for the taking, I just couldn't force myself to see it.

My early life was pleasant enough. Except my very earliest memories were populated with images of my grandparents, not my mother and father. I suppose I was spoiled. I remember of my seventh birthday when my mother had given me a beautiful shawl, lavishly trimmed with long fringe and a brilliant blue locket inlaid with gold. My family was Quaker and therefore such "rich" clothing was frowned upon. Grandmother and Mother got into a terrible argument. Grandmother cut the fringe off of my lovely shawl to a more appropriate length and was going to discard the ornate locket but Mother stopped her. "She needs this so she will know that I will never leave her again."

I was old enough by then to realize what had happened. I knew that I did not have a father, which I accepted. Many children do not know their fathers because they are no longer living. I assumed this was the case. But I came to the conclusion that Mother had left me and that is why I had no early memories of her. I must have done something wrong to make her go away.

My life continued happily enough, doing everything with my Mother. That earlier ripple was nearly forgotten. Grandmother occasionally chastised my mother for spoiling me, giving into my every whim. For me things went smoothly, until I reached the age where I became a woman. My Mother took me aside to explain the roles of men and women. She paused then and held me close. She then told me the difficult nature of how I came to be and then my world crumbled with the revelation. Those facts rang through my head and I could think of nothing else.

I was a child conceived from a brutal act of violence committed against my mother. That comment from years ago echoed through my head. Mother had left me to hide from how I was conceived. She didn't love me. That is why she caved into my every whim and why she left me. In truth she couldn't stand the sight of me. From that moment on I shut her out of my life and by the time I was sixteen I had run away from home.

I didn't deserve anyone's love. I hated myself for the violence that beget me. By the time I was eighteen I had married a young doctor fresh out of medical school. He really loved me but I cared not one bit for him. I had seen him as a way to escape Mother once and for all. We went to some wild place I had never heard of before; it didn't matter to me. So long as no one could find us, it would be enough for me.

I was never more wrong before in my life than in that moment I chose to follow my husband to the place of his birth. I hadn't realized how isolated it was and that my husband's job entailed many hours away from home. What brief moments of relative happiness we had, evaporated into nothingness. The more time I spent alone the more I felt confined. I hated my new life. My husband tried to love me but I took his love and made it seem like he was not enough for me. In truth, he was enough, but I was the one could never be enough for him. How could I love him back when I hated my very existence?

Then, Mother found us. I had to get out but there was no exit for me this time. I fought with my husband and my mother every chance I got. One night, I fought with my husband over some trifling thing and left during a vicious storm. As the rain poured down, a thought came to me. I tangled my favorite shawl and that pretty blue locket Mother had given me on a low hanging branch by a swollen river. I would make them think I was dead and I'd be free.

As I said before, I was running from the love my husband and my mother offered me. I found my way to Atlanta after a while, broke and homeless. I naturally did what many women before me have done and worked in houses of ill reputation. I thought I found a place at last in which I truly belonged, a place among the vile outcasts of this world.

Eventually, my lifestyle caught up to me and I contracted tuberculosis. Treatments were so expensive and I didn't have the money to pay for them. I knew my mother had money so I devised a plan with a low-life partner to scheme some money out of the residents of that forsaken place I used to live. He would steal their quaint folk songs and I would beg money from my mother which.

The plan was going well until my partner's scheme was uncovered and my illness revealed itself to my mother. She made plans for my treatment like I had never disappeared from her life. My husband was horribly angry and hurt. He wanted nothing to do with me. I couldn't stay. I took what money mother had set aside for our travel and went back to Atlanta.

There, I actively sought treatments for my tuberculosis but in the end got hooked on the medicine that was to make well. Ironically, I ended up near the place I had just left the year before, trying to avoid those I owed money to in Atlanta. It seems I could not stay away; something was drawing me back. Mother would not give me any money and I accused her of loving those poor souls more than me, her own daughter. This only confirmed to me that she still despised me for my birth. I told her I wished I had never been born to her and she granted me that wish and disowned me. I really made a mess of it all. And that's when that naive little school teacher walked into my life.

I hated her cheerfulness. I hated how she fit into my place in my mother and husband's lives. She had the nerve to tell me my husband was worth fighting for. Well, there she had a point. My husband had the means to access the medicine my body craved. I could make it work between us for a while. I was wrong. He would not cave to my demands, for my own good, and I hate him for it.

Somewhere, though, deep inside me I knew what the schoolteacher said was true. I would die alone and much sooner than I would like. Still, I sought to hurt this girl and when I had succeeded, I didn't like the results. I had taken this girl who was incapable of hating even the most ill-repentant of people and twisted her into hating me. The seconds after she stormed away from our argument, remorse weighed me down. I was a vile, recovering drug addict, a poor excuse of a human and I didn't want to be like this anymore. I didn't want to hurt those around me anymore. I wanted...I wanted to be loved.

Then she came back, that brave soul. Despite what I had done to her, she wasn't giving up on me. I wanted to be like her, I wanted to be like Christy. I know she wasn't perfect, but she held fast to that belief that there was some good in every one. She believed that there was something redeemable about me. Her faith, not only in God but in all humankind, moved me to tears.

With her help, I found my way in this world and I followed that road home. At last, I had found what I was looking for...love. The road home led to the love that I sought to run from. I mended my ways and my relationships. It wasn't too late for me. Though I can't take back what I've done, I can at least ask for forgiveness from those I hurt.

The road home that I walked was difficult, but neccsary. I couldn't have learned any other way. It made home all the more the reward in the end.

_Margaret Seebohn Henderson MacNeill found what she was looking for in the early morning of December 29, 1913._

_She will be missed by those who knew her but shall live forever in our hearts and minds._

_The naive, blue-eyed school teacher,_

_Christy R. Huddleston, January 6, 1914._


End file.
